Feigning Interest in PMs
 

During the Thanksgiving holidays, I had a conversation with the son of a very old friend. The young man attends a university with a very strong Greek community. He is not a member of a social fraternity. He is a resident assistant living with college freshmen.

He said he noticed that during fraternity rush, men who live on the same floor will attend rush events together, anywhere from six to 12 guys in a group. Often, he said, certain fraternities hint they will accept the men as a group. However, during the dinner-by-invitation only round (when serious candidates for membership get and receive one last look at a fraternity), not all the men will receive invitations. The more diplomatic fraternities will tell those who didn't receive an invitation that national headquarters has limited the number of pledges that are allowed to be accepted; the less diplomatic ones will tell the guys that there was no way that they would have gotten a bid from ABC or XYZ.

My friend's son told me that such situation increase tension between Greeks and independents in the dorms. He said some of the men who receive the bids reject them, but most accept them. The worst case scenario, he said, is when one roommate gets a bid and the other doesn't. He said he extends a lot of tea and sympathy during the last week of rush.

I want to know is it common for fraternities to fake interest in a group of men, knowing that they are interested in a few but not all in the group?

Just being curious

As I read your friend's son's story, I wonder whether there is any feigning of interest at all. It is very possible that the person talking to the groups earnestly thinks that all would make great brothers (he probably shouldn't be hinting that he has the individual power to make that call, if that is the case). Just because that one person likes this group of potential members, it doesn't mean that the whole group is going to feel the same way when it comes to extending bids.

I'm glad your friend's son is providing tea for these guys who feel like they've been hoodwinked. I'm not sure that there is blatant dishonestly going on here, though. It might just be the Rush process working itself out and the fraternities make choices based on getting to know each guy individually, instead of who their friends are. Personally, if I was your friend's son, I would remind these guys on his floor that there are (I'm assuming) other fraternities out there during Rush week so that they are not limiting their options.

I'm not too sure where the feigning of interest is coming into play, except maybe the "more diplomatic" fraternities saying they have limited space even when that may not be true. This applies to both fraternities and sororities: it's bad PR to have PNMs leave your recruitment party with a bad taste in their mouths, regardless of whether you or your chapter is interested in them. The chapter could be really interested in the friend of a particular PNM, so you don't want anyone to have a negative experience. Just because a group of PNMs come through recruitment doesn't mean they will all get bids. They are separated so members can get to know them as individuals.

Like skylark said, one member may really click with a PNM, but the PNM isn't offered a bid because one member's opinion isn't always representative of the whole chapter. There was one chapter where I clicked with some individuals, but I was not invited to preference. It was tough to swallow, but it was for the best, because I wouldn't have fit in there. Conversely, I have had some great conversations with PNMs on the member side of recruitment, but they don't necessarily fit into the chapter just because I had a great conversation with them. So while it can be heartbreaking to a PNM that they had a great conversation with a member and end up without a bid or an invite, it's not necessarily that the host was feigning interest; there could have been a connection on an individual level, but not a chapter level.

Logically, if a group only has a limited number of spaces, not everyone can be extended a bid to any organization. That is just common sense. The group may like the entire group, but it is not physically possible for all of the men to be accepted, due to those constraints. Even if they are the nicest, most diplomatic group, all organizations have voting processes, and all of them have their own decisions to make on a personal level. That doesn't mean that many of the men in that group didn't like the potentional member--it just means that maybe one of the members did not get to know the pm enough to want to extend him an offer to become a brother. I don't think being nice to people to get to know them is "feigning interest" at all.

Also too fraternities, like sororities, have national and chapter requirements that a PNM must meet in order to extend someone a bid. For example, I've talked to PNm's with outstanding personalities but their grades were in the toilet and as much as we liked them as people we just were not able to extend them a bid because of the grade risk. So its important to keep these things in mind as well.

I find that freshmen tend to travel in packs, more out of convenience than real friendships, until they find friends they really click with. It's naive to think two randomly selected roommates will click with the exact same people and groups. The glos often know better than the pnms where they will fit in, although it seems like they could be more diplomatic about cutting people.

I think a lot of times the groups of guys don't give the fraternities any choice other than to feign interest, because they're so far up each others' asses and to the left. The fraternities don't know if these are just dorm friendships or guys that have been BFFs since they were 3. So they kind of have to be nice if they like any one of the guys and then worry about the fallout later.

This is one of the nice things about women's formal rush - even if groups of friends are rushing at the same time, most likely they'll get separated when the rho chi groups are created. It sucks to really like a rushee and not be able to get a word in edgewise because her obnoxious friend/roommate is stuck to her side like flypaper and won't shut up.

If I were this RA, I would encourage the residents on my floor to go through rush as individuals instead of sticking together so much. This behavior not only results in some people having hurt feelings from not getting bids at all, but guys taking bids just because their roomie/friend is pledging there.

I had a similar experience to that described above, with one key difference--my room mate and I DID join the same sisterhood. I guess it just happened to fit both of us equally well. :)

Reminds me of a lovely event I experienced as a PX.

"Sara" & "Jen" promised each other that they would be pledge sisters no matter what. Jen had her heart set on XYZ and only ever went to their parties. Sara also liked XYZ but went to other parties as well.

Come pref night, Sara attended XYZ and TPA. Once again, Jen is only at XYZ.

Bid day arrives: Sara received bids to both organizations. She accepted TPA, because she thinks Jen did not get her bid to XYZ and went with where her heart was. Later she discovered that Jen was late in receiving her bid to XYZ because she is a commuter. President of XYZ told Sara she can change her mind and accept XYZ instead. So Sara CHANGED her bid acceptance later on that night so she could be with BFF Jen.

Don't even get me started on how our Greek Director let this happen.

Well, if Sara only verbally accepted to Theta Phi and didn't sign anything, then I guess technically she could change her mind. If she signed something, I would be absolutely irate if I were in your chapter because that's against NPC rules! But still, that was really lame if Sara's heart was with Theta Phi.

There was a pair like this a couple years ago. They initially wanted to be together, but then they both fell in love with different chapters. Come pref, they each had the same second choice and both got bids there!

I don't see anything wrong with this process. This is a membership drive. Ostensibly, if you meet a guy who you think would be a great addition, you'd encourage him to come out to rush and to bring his friends. His friends are likely to be as great as he is. Or there may be some duds.

I wouldn't call it feigning interest or stringing anyone along. They're trying to find the best possible members for their organization. A larger applicant pool makes this possible. The more guys who come out, the more who hear about it. This brings more people out, and more potentially strong additions.

Are you one of those people who gets mad if you don't get a job offer after the 3rd interview because they were just stringing you along and wasting your time? Because that was their ulterior motive. Wasting your time. They had nothing better to do because they picked their candidate out already. Yessiree. Just waste your time and avoid all of the work piling up around them just so they could inconvenience you.

My group is very open about it.

If a guy gets voted down on a given night and shows up the next night, he's given what we call a "dumpster tour" where a brother that he knows takes him out the back door of the house into the parking lot near the dumpster and says "There's a house for everyone, this house isn't for you" and he can walk out the back without anybody seeing him. We don't vote that many people down though

You may be my favorite member on this site.
Theres nothing wrong with being nice but that doesn't include giving bids to guys who aren't top-tier.

Plenty of organizations DO do this. It isn't about wasting your time; it's about maintaining the appearance that they are making an opportunity available to a pool. Sometimes they have a policy of advertising positions and allowing people to interview, but it's all a charade because they have an internal candidate all picked out. Academic departments are notorious for doing this.

And isn't this problem the reason why release figures came into NPC rush? Because popular houses were inviting women back just as "insurance" in case their top picks said no, or to make their parties look full? The NPC had to step in and stop the houses from stringing people along.

I'm not saying that that is what's going on at the houses the OP is talking about. But it really is not so ridiculous that an organization would string people along for their own purposes.
________
Avandia Class Action Settlement